


Void in the Machine

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Dishonored fusion, Kidnapping, M/M, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-18 18:51:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17586404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: Blood meets spilled whale oil in a sticky puddle on the floor, and where they mingle they form a black, stinking paste.





	Void in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacehopper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehopper/gifts).



> I loved your prompts so much, it was such a pleasure to write for you.

Blood meets spilled whale oil in a sticky puddle on the floor, and where they mingle they form a black, stinking paste. An alchemical reaction of sorts; Adam doesn’t let it touch his boots. Glass crunches as he navigates his way around overturned furniture and dozens of gleaming metal limbs. He ducks his head to avoid the fingers that dangle senseless from the ceiling. The room is a calculated ruin, smashed and torn and tainted with spatters of blood.

But there’s no corpse in the chair at the centre of the room, and Adam lets himself breathe for the first time since entering. This grisly display is not an abject lesson, not some kind of final _fuck you_ delivered via the death of one more person he should have protected. This is a warning. An invitation to talk. _We can work this out, can’t we, Jensen? I know you didn’t mean to screw around with one of the most dangerous guys in Dunwall._

 _I kind of did_ , Adam thinks. _Shit. Got too cocky._

There’s something in the chair.

Adam approaches carefully; he doesn’t expect booby traps, but he also wasn’t expecting Otar Botkoveli to take this angle of attack. Makes sense in hindsight, and Adam curses himself again. He’s been careless. Should have kept his distance from the beginning instead of bringing down the curse of his own spectacularly bad luck on someone who doesn’t deserve it.

“Outsider’s eyes, Koller, I’m sorry,” he mutters, staring down at the battered dentist’s chair, and the severed metal arm. It gleams, beetle-black, the pistons gummed with congealed blood and yet more whale oil. At the shoulder end, wires hang loose, sticky where they were yanked carelessly free.

Koller would have hated that. Not losing the arm; crazy as he is, he’d have removed it himself if Otar gave him five minutes and a pair of pliers. But someone took that choice, and took his arm with it, violent and careless with its delicate parts. If Adam knows his doctor at all then Koller would have felt the ineptitude more keenly than the kidnapping. He’s strange like that.

Adam reaches for the lifeless fingers; they give a metallic click where they touch his own.

“I’ll be there soon,” he says. “I’ll get you out.” His promise rings hollow amidst the blood and hanging bronze body parts.

In a corner of the room, swaddled in violet-gold draping, the driftwood and copper pipe shrine gives a hiss. Adam doesn’t notice it. He never does.

*

“Don’t be scared of the chair,” Koller says. “The chair is gentle. I promise.”

Half of Adam’s body seems to have gone on strike; he limps compulsively, his joints squeaking. His vision has acquired an ominous purple fog. He probably won’t be on his feet much longer. And still he hesitates. “Oh, sure, I feel so much better about it now. Seriously, Koller, where did you even get this thing? Is it safe?”

“You would not believe some of the people who have sat in my chair,” Koller says; he places a hand between Adam’s shoulder blades, trying to nudge him forward. Adam will not be nudged. “I have high class patronage!”

“You mean city watch guards and corrupt overseers?” Adam says. “Or maybe the gang members I see hanging around your neighbourhood?”

“Sure, Jensen,” Koller says amiably. “Believe what you want. But _you_ don’t know which of the Boyle ladies is secretly augmented, and Koller? Koller _does_.”

“ _Koller_ doesn’t seriously expect me to believe that. There’s no way. People would talk.” The chair gives a discomfiting creak as Adam tests his weight against its frail metal skeleton. He’s a heavy man, these days. Pistons and ball joints and whale oil, steam on Dunwall’s coldest days. There’s not even enough skin left on his body to reupholster Koller’s famous chair.

That’s unfortunate. The chair almost needs it more than Adam does.

Koller bustles around his workspace, hooking up a glowing blue tank to vats and corroded pipework; brushing screws and miniscule metal panels off his workbenches; lining up wrenches and sharp little blades. He chatters as he detaches one metal hand at the wrist, barely flinching at the steam it expels on release. It’s replaced in seconds with a different model; this one sprouts tools in the place of fingers, the palm hollowed out and filled with a small, glass-covered light.

 _Miniature lamp,_ Adam thinks, fascinated despite the revulsion he feels at watching the process. _Whale oil, but how does he keep it stable? That glass looks too thin to be safe. Did he neutralise the oil somehow? There’s no way it’s pure._

“-and that’s how yours truly found himself with an actual Boyle lady in his chair, and you know, she didn’t even tip me when the job was done. That’s some bullshit, man, that’s just not right. Took me a couple of hours to get her new parts installed, with all of the bodyguards breathing down my neck.”

“I’ve never tipped you,” Adam says dryly. “And the service being what it is, I’m not about to start.”

“See, that’s what I like about you, Jensen, you’re a real funny man. Always joking around. And we’re friends, so I couldn’t let you tip me anyway, you know? That’s not how it works. Anything you need, I charge you cost of replacement parts only.”

The chair digs uncomfortably into the few remaining organic sections of Adam’s back. “And what do you get out of this?”

Koller flashes him a bright grin under red-rimmed, insomniac eyes. He flexes his new hand. “Only the pleasure of your company. And also the chance to get up close and personal with those sweet, sweet Sarif augs you’re wearing.”

“You have some real high standards for friendship.”

“I am happy you agree.”

Koller is at his most comfortable while he’s working; their months of acquaintance haven’t cured him of being occasionally nervy around Adam, though some of it may come from knowing exactly what his metal parts are capable of. But that fades fast once Adam becomes his patient. He gets the unnerving impression that Koller would like him a lot better as a comatose, compliant pile of redundant flesh and experimental _enhancement_.

From the corner of his eye, he sees something right at the back of Koller’s workspace. It’s gone when he looks at it directly, but the impression remains as a gold-and-violet afterimage in his memory. Some kind of structure. The angles defy understanding. Adam blinks.

“I’m going to need you to check my eyes first,” he says. “I’m seeing…things. Fog. Shadows. Dark spots, like the world’s suddenly sprouted holes.”

“Probably just some tubing out of alignment,” Koller tells him. “Although you had better not let the Abbey hear you describe it that way.” He laughs, a jittery sound. “They’ll probably decide you’re seeing into the Void itself; as if they need another reason to hate us augs, right?”

“I’m not, though, am I? That’s not possible.”

Koller shrugs. “It’s not as far fetched as you probably want. I saw some strange shit in my time at the Academy of Natural Philosophy.”

“Is this before or after they expelled you?”

“And that is my cue to change the subject,” Koller says, abruptly cheerful. He reaches over Adam’s head, unwinding a long tube from where it wraps around several cylindrical tanks. At one end hangs a modified gas mask, the round glass eyes crazed with age and use.

Like most of Koller’s equipment, it doesn’t inspire confidence.

“I’m not putting that on,” Adam lies, even as Koller arranges it around his head. “I’ve never needed it before, why now?”

“You’re the one who came in here talking about a bomb down on John Clavering Boulevard. That’s a serious hit, man. I’m going to have to give you the _full_ inspection.”

It is tempting to argue. But the joints in Adam’s knees are locking, and his elbows feel like they’re going to follow. Blue-white steam snakes around his legs; he’s venting whale oil, he thinks, and that means cracked casings. As sturdy as his brass and bone innards are, he can’t risk it. And Koller’s never let him down yet. That counts for a lot.

The gas kicks in. Adam fades out to Koller’s well-intentioned reassurance, and the distant, inexplicable sound of whale song.

*

Dunwall is a troubled city, but then it always has been. Even on the rare sunlit days, there are alleys and rows of stacked apartments that only ever moulder in shadow, where crime spreads as fast as sickness and neglect. Those shadows are expanding their territory, now the Empress is dead. Plague and gang violence are as common as clouds and drizzle. It’s worse for the augmented; every day sees men and women found in piles of garbage, some still bleeding from the holes their metals limbs leave behind. Tyvia is always buying. Demand outstrips supply.

It just figures that Koller wouldn’t have the sense to stay clear of the shadows.

The Dvali gang have carved themselves a haunch of Dunwall territory comprising of the red light district; they own the infamous Golden Cat, and have shares in most of the other brothels. They smuggle weapons, people, restricted goods. They traffic augmentations. They supply the parts Adam can no longer function without, and which Abbey directive means he can’t get legally.

The price they ask is steep. Still, Adam should have known better than to try and get creative in fulfilling his obligations. Should have kept his head down, played the good little delivery aug. Or maybe tried his luck with another of the gangs; the Dead Eels and Bottle Street Gang both trade with cogs. He could have tried…something.

“Outsider’s eyes,” Adam mutters, staring at the Wall of Light that blocks his path. It’s a new development, and it means that Radich is dead, and Otar runs the Dvali now. It may well mean that Koller is already dead. Bait for the trap Adam knows he’s walking into.

He was ready for guards, and there are plenty of those. Ready for the high brick walls and the barbed wire encircling Dvali home territory, all entrances watched and heavily defended. But the Wall is something else. It means a whole other kind of trouble.

Adam turns his back on the blue-white, shimmering surface. His footsteps are heavier than they once were; he walks with unmistakable clicks and whirs, the hisses of the pistons forcing whale oil through his inner tubing. Stealth is harder than it used to be. But there’s no way to brute force through a Wall of Light unless he wants to come out the other side as a pile of blackened metal and chunks of seared meat.

Adam climbs. He scrambles up faded plaster walls and onto balconies, his joints humming, moving smooth and strong. Abandoned apartments offer new entrances; between the plague and the gang warfare, this district has a lot of open real estate. Adam explores unhindered. Steam curls around the vents in his limbs, but he’s never at risk of overheating.

Not even Sarif’s old factory could keep him functioning this efficiently. Even fresh off the transplant table, his augmentations were never so responsive, so easily managed.

That’s all down to Koller. He found a way to make the metal feel alive.

There is an unwatched back alley bordering an older section of Dvali territory. Here, the ubiquitous barbed wire-topped brickwork is crumbling, the apartment windows boarded up with rotting wood. There are no guard patrols; this is a forgotten place, a security oversight, and from his perch on a third-storey balcony, Adam soon sees why.

Weepers. Dozens of them.

He holds himself still, willing his vents and pistons and humming joints to silence themselves, willing himself unnoticeable. It’s unnecessary; most normal people never think to look up at all, and these ones even less. No wonder the Dvali haven’t bothered to secure this particular alleyway. The security creates itself.

 _Sure, because my day isn’t hard enough_ , he thinks. _Someone out there sat down and said, ‘you know what, let me just fuck him up a little worse. He’ll love it.’ Somewhere out there, the Outsider is laughing himself sick._ He can take them down. Same as he can take down any of the Dvali patrols he’s spotted during his little scouting mission; the problem is, he can’t take them _quietly_. And Koller needs him quiet. If any of the alarms are triggered, Otar might just get nervous enough to-

Without warning, the meandering patrollers freeze where they stand, some of them mid-step. They don’t move. They don’t even seem to breathe. Adam holds his own breath, and in the stillness he swears he can hear a hissing, echoing whisper in a language he does and doesn’t recognise.

And then the Weepers turn in unison. They begin to shuffle in the same direction, down the damp and darkened alley, and away from Dvali territory. Stunned, Adam watches them go. They almost seem to be following something. A whisper; a summons. One by one, they round a corner and vanish from sight and hearing.

They leave the alley empty.

Every single one of Adam’s instincts screams for him to back away. To find another route, to go back and try the fucking Wall of Light if he has to; something is wrong here, something strange is going on, and he does not want to make it part of his business. There will be another way. He will _find_ another way.

But he thinks of the tattered metal arm left sitting on Koller’s chair, and the nervous, jittery tremble in Koller’s voice the last time they met. The way he flinched when Adam entered his workroom, and then exhaled in open relief. The slightly wild look in his eyes when Adam eventually left, after a tune up that should not have taken as long as it did. The fact that he was afraid the whole time, and didn’t ask for help.

Maybe he didn’t think he was allowed to. Maybe he didn’t think Adam would give it.

“What’s a walk in the Void between friends?” Adam asks the evening air, and swings over the balcony into the alleyway.

*

It’s a grey, dreary Fugue Feast this year. The rains are late, and heavy; the air is warm, stinking with fermenting garbage, rotting fish, and spiced Serkonan sausage. The drinking and drugs started early.

Adam isn’t looking forward to helping with the clean-up efforts. More shell shocked expressions. More augs, victims of the shadows in between the Fugue Feast lamps and the hatred people don’t feel a need to hide, at a time when everything is permitted. More murders he doesn’t have the time or jurisdiction to work. More guilt; even armoured as he is, built up in brass and fuelled with blue-white whale oil, clanking when he moves, feared on sight, he still can’t be everywhere. Can’t save everyone.

“Cheer up, Jensen,” Koller tells him. He places two passably clean glasses on the table between them. “At least you’re not stuck hiding in your own basement during Fugue. Not that I don’t appreciate your company; any time you want to visit, Koller is happy to host. But also if you want to go out and have wild, crazy time at the Golden Cat, I don’t blame you. I am…probably safe on my own. The doors are very hidden. No one ever remembers my secret book. Kind of disappointing, actually, given that I wrote it.”

He jitters even more than usual, as if his skin is itching under his clothes. He glances at the exits. Adam takes the glasses from him, lining them up in front of the whisky he brought as a peace offering, and apology. _Sorry for stopping by on Fugue. Had nowhere else to be._

Lucky he did, as it turns out.

“Explain to me how your ‘agreement’ with the Dvali went this wrong,” he says, pouring whisky generously. “You told me Radich needed you.”

“And he did! He does! It’s just that things are really kind of unstable right now, and I’m pretty sure Otar Botkoveli might have got ideas from that thing with the Dead Eels a few months back. You know about that? Someone almost managed to take down Lizzy Stride herself! They didn’t win, but people noticed. It made everyone a little bit crazy.”

“So, exactly the same as usual.” Adam pushes a glass towards Koller; they toast each other. He watches Koller start to settle, soothed by the alcohol and the company. It was a good call, coming here. Nice to have someone actually happy to see him.

It’s a bad night to be outside, but Koller’s basement is at least passably cheerful. Bare bulbs hang like pilot lights from their haphazard wiring, and the metal limbs dangling from the ceiling cast familiar shadows on the wall. They don’t bother Adam these days. They are as much part of Koller’s space as the graffitied designs and equations on the walls, the hissing whale oil tanks, the purple-draped shrine in the corner, the benches overflowing with screws and pistons and brass and bone and tools Adam doesn’t have names for.

He likes this place. The chaos is something he understands.

They drink; Adam is quiet, Koller is not, and it works for them that way. At some point Koller rummages under a pile of glass eye pieces and copper tubing, producing food; apples, cheese, blood sausage, apricot tartlets. “No chicken feet, I promise,” Koller says. “I remember last time.”

“You didn’t know I’d stop by this evening.”

“Not exactly,” Koller says evasively. “But also I can’t help but notice that every time things get weird with the Dvali, you come and hang out until they leave. Not that I am complaining, it’s very sweet of you. Just an observation.”

“You’re my doctor. Your problems are my problems, it’s called self-interest.”

“ _Sure_ it is, Jensen,” Koller says, and gives a wink so exaggerated that Adam has to look away to keep from laughing. He could, he thinks, have been more subtle. But it grates on him to imagine Koller’s nervy genius enslaved to some low-life Dunwall street gang. Grates even worse each time he stops by for checkups and catches himself finding reasons to linger.

The level of whiskey in the bottle drops as time passes, and at some point Koller pushes his glass aside and says, “So you’re staying, right?”

It’s something Adam’s been trying not to think about. Something he’s gotten pretty good at not thinking about in general, but he’s backed himself into a corner here. It’s Fugue; the rules are as blurred as the memories will be, and he’s the one who showed up to Koller’s dungeon with whiskey and intentions even he can’t decipher. In hindsight, not the smartest move he could have made.

“I’m not sure,” he admits. “I didn’t exactly think it through.”

Koller shrugs. “Who said anything about thinking? It’s Fugue, man, this is not time for thinking. But it _is_ a good time for you to let me to mess around with your fancy augs, if you know what I mean.”

“You already do that.”

“No, Jensen,” Koller says, with an unabashed leer. His fingers find Adam’s on the table between them, clicking gently where they touch. He looks at them with the kind of heat that Adam barely recognises anymore. “Not like this. _This_ is a whole other kind of messing around.”

Adam makes an effort to take it slow, careful, to be a gentleman as best as he remembers how; Koller is having none of it. His hands find the spaces between Adam’s clothes, tearing them off like he tears the fabric wrappings from the augs he gets smuggled to him. At some point, Adam accepts that they won’t be kissing for hours, tentative and unsure. He lets Koller haul the shirt from his shoulders and push him onto the rickety bed.

“I’m gonna guess foreplay isn’t something you’re familiar with,” he says wryly. Still, though, he leans back on his elbows, watching eyebrows raised as Koller strips in front of him. Clothes tossed on the dusty floor, wiry muscle and literal wires underneath. He’s a mess; his skin a bio-mechanical patchwork, brass and bone, sockets in the skin. Adam’s breathing grows shallow.

Briefly, he thinks he might be nauseated.

Metal clacks as Koller straddles him, their artificial parts so intertwined they blend into indistinguishable scrap. The man is heavy; scrawny as he is, always stooped over work or in deference, it doesn’t seem like he should be carrying that much weight. Adam feels the pistons in his thighs start to pump harder. Overdrive to keep them upright. His metal can handle it. It’s the rest of him he’s worried about.

And then Koller grins. “ _Adam_ , my man,” he says. “If you think clothes are my kind of foreplay, I have not taught you very well. You and me, augs and skin, like this? This is where the fun starts. Better hold on, because I don’t play around.”

He’s a relentless work of man and machinery; his hands and teeth find sockets and seams where mishandling prompts light sparks of electricity, except that what he does is far from mishandling. It’s also not clinical; he laughs, he teases, he makes Adam describe his more exotic upgrades ( _Typhoon; fills everyone and everything around me with lead. Careful- holy shit_ ) and then touches with awe and open envy. He drags his tongue across the rigid brass bars that replaced Adam’s collarbones, and Adam exhales hard.

The nausea is gone. The caution, the hesitation, that is gone. If nothing else, he has too much pride to lie like a metal mannequin while Koller touches him like an Outsider-granted miracle. He can fight back. He can _give_ back.

The sex, when it happens, is almost an afterthought to blurred, uncountable hours of exploration, electric discharge winding through the air and the steam, the taste of metal coating Adam’s tongue. He is permitted, so carefully, to run his hands over Koller’s metal skull plate. The look on the other man’s face is indescribable. And Adam understands that this is an honour, a privilege he’s being granted. He thinks he can almost feel his hands shake. He traces the genius seams that make up Koller’s skull, and almost doesn’t notice Koller settle back into his lap, take his cock in one cold hand and slide it home.

Almost.

*

There are things Koller can do, without effort or intention, that no one else has ever managed. He brings life to Adam’s dead nerve endings; takes his metal parts and teaches them to act as bone and muscle and flesh. Reroutes the stubborn pathways in Adam’s mind, tricking them into believing that his replacement metal is enhancement, not invasion. He can make Adam feel at home within himself.

He can make Adam _want_ to be himself.

Adam slips through quiet, worn-down streets, sidestepping piles of garbage and the rats that watch him with bright black eyes. It’s a clear night; the red light district comes alive, but Adam sticks to the outskirts. The cheap apartments and closed stores, laundry lines swaying in the breeze. Noise filters through from a few streets over, where the brothels and pubs begin to crop up. It’s not helpful; Otar might keep a hostage anywhere at all.

Especially now he leads the Dvali.

Acting on nothing more concrete than a hunch, Adam takes to Dunwall’s lower levels, the damp sewer streets that most citizens avoid if they can help it. He knows them a lot better than he’d like. More to the point, he knows Otar’s old stomping grounds.

The casino is quieter than the last time Adam stopped by. He keeps to the shadows, moving slow enough that his joints barely creak, and his footsteps don’t clank on the stone beneath them. Quiet night; one bored barkeep, a couple of off-duty guards playing cards at a table. And, coming out of the back room, the familiar figure of Vano Shetekauri.

Adam ducks behind a pillar, keeping Otar’s bodyguard in view. He flexes his wrists; black blades slide free, as soundless as they were the last time Koller refilled their oil. They haven’t seen any use since that last tune-up; they don’t see much use in general. As solutions to problems go, they’re more permanent than Adam likes.

Tonight he finds himself inclined to check they’re still functional.

“Vano,” the barkeeper says. “Find what you need?”

“Yeah.” There is a leather satchel draped over Vano’s shoulder; it clacks as he moves. Sounds like a stack of audiographs. Information Otar can’t risk being found by the less corrupt branches of the Abbey, or maybe blackmail material. Or his memoir. Adam doesn’t care; he leans against the pillar, weighing his options. Planning his approach.

“Busy night?” the barkeeper asks. “Or are you finished? I just got in a shipment, good Tyvian vodka. Stay around, it’s nice to have someone who appreciates it.”

“Later,” Vano says. “Otar wants these right away, and then I have to check in on a…guest. Give me an hour.”

“Sure, sure. Who’s visiting this time?”

“Aug doctor. You know, the one Otar was hassling? Turns out he was keeping Radich’s cogs in gear, and that’s why we couldn’t mess him up too bad. And now another of his friends has pissed off Otar, so we’re giving him the VIP treatment.”

“Unlucky,” the barkeeper says, shaking his head. “Sounds like he needs some better friends.”

“He can make some in the Void. That’s where he’s headed; as soon as his friend comes to apologise, Otar’s done. He’s fucking strange, this one. Huge metal plate screwed into his skull, arms and legs all swapped out with brass. Gives me the creeps. It’s a mercy, anyway. If the Abbey found him, they’d kill him slower.”

“Poor fucker.”

“Unnatural,” Vano says. “I went to take off one of his cog arms, as a message, and he gets pissed at me because I’m _not doing it right_ , and I’ll _damage the fucking wiring_. Has to be Void-touched, I’m telling you. I look at that metal skull plate and I can feel the Outsider dance on my grave.”

“So don’t go and see him,” the barkeeper says. “Come on, Vano, how many guests have you ever lost? Just give Otar his stuff and call it a night. Hey, why not invite him over too! This is good vodka, shipped straight out of Dabokva. I can’t sell to people who won’t appreciate it.” He cajoles; it’s clear he wants the patronage, now Otar’s found a new headquarters and business is slowing down.

Silently, Adam wills Vano to show some professionalism. He needs someone to lead him to Koller.

“Yeah,” Vano says slowly. “Yeah, why not. Our guest is way out on the other side of the district anyway, it’s a long fucking walk. I don’t know why Otar wanted him kept in the old Galvani offices. Though his _friend_ is the type to try a crazy rescue, so maybe it’s better to hide him.”

“If his augs are that unusual, should have kept him in the Golden Cat,” the barkeeper says, and Vano gives a harsh laugh.

If they continue their conversation, Adam doesn’t hear it. Blades retracting soundlessly, he slips from pillar to pillar, making his way back out into the sewers. The effort of moving so silently puts strain on his shoulders and the remains of his thighs; he’ll pay for it in the morning. Right now, he shuts the pain down with a few swallows of Piero’s Spiritual Remedy. There’s work to do.

The guards outside Galvani’s old offices are a subtle breed; some masquerade as city watch, their uniforms not quite concealing the Dvali gang tattoos. One lurks in the overgrown garden, idly plucking at weeds. Another sweeps the street repeatedly, his clothes revealing the silhouettes of guns and knives.

Again, Adam takes to the higher levels. He’s always found it astonishing, how casually people overlook the strata of Dunwall’s geography. Sewers, streets, rooftops and balconies; there are so many ways around for a man whose arms and legs can bear his weight three times over. This high up, noise is less of a problem. The occasional clank and creak will be attributed to rats. Or maybe Weepers.

He slips in through an upstairs window, picking the lock with a small, sharp extension to his finger that Sarif would never have given him, and which Koller installed with an approving grin and a, _better rob someone real rich, Jensen, pass the coin around to people who need it._

There are guards on the lower levels; he hears their movements on the creaking wood, and their voices drifting up the staircase. But up on the third floor, all is quiet. The taxidermied decorations are dusty, the paintings dull. The whole floor feels abandoned. Adam starts opening doors.

Koller is behind the third.

They’ve taken his white coat. It’s a stupid thing to notice first, but Adam’s rarely seen him without, and the discrepancy is jarring. Worse yet is the bloody shirtsleeve hanging empty from his left shoulder, and the chains keeping him bound to a heavy wooden desk.

Koller doesn’t look up as the door opens. He has a screwdriver in his one remaining hand, and he bends over a detached brass foot on the desk in front of him. Something about it annoys him; he shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes, muttering under his breath.

“I don’t know if I can fix this,” he announces. “The mechanisms are crushed, man, I need to gut the whole piece and start from scratch. I can hammer out the dents in the external plating, but all the pipes are fucked. It’s leaking oil everywhere. Shit. I _told_ you, I could just take it off myself! I’m professional, I know what I’m doing.”

He moves around the desk; his gait is awkward, limping. One of his legs comes into view. It ends at the ankle.

“I can be useful,” Koller says. The brief bravado is gone now he’s no longer lecturing on mechanisms. Now, his voice shakes. He sounds painfully young. “I can…you have augs in your crew, right? I’ve seen them, the big, muscly guys. Who keeps them tuned up? I can do it better, Radich chose me for a reason! I am the best. Jensen will tell you. When he comes, you ask him. He’ll be my reference. He’ll tell you I’m the best.”

“It’s true,” Adam says, stepping into the room. He closes the door gently behind him. “Which makes you way overqualified to be running tune-ups on criminals. Wouldn’t hurt you to aim a little higher. I hear one of the Boyle ladies is augmented.”

Koller jerks around, dropping the screwdriver, fumbling for the desk as he tries to rest weight on his non-existent foot. Adam strides across the room and catches him before he can fall. He’s horrified by how light Koller feels. How pale the blood loss has left him. How he _creaks_ with every movement.

“ _Jensen?_ ” Koller says, high pitched, shaky. “What the fuck, how did you- Otar said you’d never find me! He said I should ask the Outsider for a rescue, because that was my only chance!”

“You need to stop taking life advice from Tyvian gangsters,” Adam says. “Or just Tyvians in general, honestly.”

Koller gives a short laugh. “Man, _I’m_ Tyvian.”

“That’s kind of my point.” Adam holds Koller upright through the laughter that shakes his frame. There is sticky blood seeping into the joints in his hands, whale oil leaking into his coat, and he thinks he can feel further absences under Koller’s shirt. Several ribs too few, one collarbone shorter than it should be. Seems like someone’s been taking metal trophies.

“I’m going to kill him,” Adam mutters into Koller’s untameable hair. Gently, he turns the other man’s head just far enough to check on the screws and panels of his skull plate. Those, at least, look untouched. He probably wouldn’t have survived their careless removal. “Otar, and Vano too.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Koller says. “Someone else will take over. They always do. In Tyvia, in Dunwall, wherever. Augs always get the worst deal.”

“If they hurt you-”

“You can’t kill the world, Jensen,” Koller tells him. “And I know you hate killing people, anyway. You’re crazy. Augs like yours, but you never use them. It’s like turning down a gift from the Outsider, it’s…crazy. And I am so happy you’re here.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.” Koller doesn’t seem inclined to move from where he leans into Adam, so Adam fumbles around him, finding the metal cuff around his arm. He snaps it easily. Feels Koller hum approval into his shoulder.

“You know that’s really hot, right?”

“I know you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re in shock.”

“Whatever you say, Jensen.”

Adam finds chalk among the scalpels and clamps and screwdrivers that clutter Galvani’s desk. He takes it to the wall. Scrawls a message on the wood, and it’s not even half of what he wants to say, but he doesn’t have time. Koller is swaying against the desk, idly prodding at his useless, severed foot. The guards could show up at any moment. But he refuses to leave without having the last word.

_I found him. I can find you. Call us even, and I won’t have to._

The message looks faintly ridiculous, unsubtle and far more confident than Adam feels. But Koller is right; killing Otar won’t help. It might just spark a gang war, and Dunwall doesn’t need that on top of plague, blockades, a dead Empress. No point reporting Otar to the city watch, either. No one will care that he kidnapped and tortured a cog. Or Otar will bribe them until they stop caring. That’s how things work. That’s life.

“I hear Slackjaw is good to augs,” Koller mumbles. “If you’re fair to him, he’s fair to you. Maybe we can order parts through him from now on.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Maybe not Lizzy Stride. I’m sure she’s really nice, but her teeth freak me out.”

“And you don’t think that’s a little hypocritical.”

“No,” Koller says. “I’m just saying. Also, I think I am about to pass out. Yeah, I’m definitely passing out now.”

Adam is there to catch him. It’s...painful, how little he weighs. How easy it is to hoist him over one shoulder and make for the door, and then the window, leaving behind a message and the remains of Koller’s mangled metal foot.

No one stops them. No one even sees them; the guard patrols don’t look up, and the apartments Adam passes through are blessedly empty. When he reaches the crumbling wall at the edge of Dvali territory, he peers through the brick and finds the alleyway still empty. There’s no sign of the Weepers. No sign of anyone at all.

“You have the Outsider’s own luck,” Koller slurs against his shoulder. “I’m telling you, he’s a big fan. Maybe you are one of his favourites.”

Adam sighs, gently adjusting his grip around Koller’s waist. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t wish more problems on me.”

“Sure thing, Jensen. You’re still _my_ favourite, anyway. And that’s what really matters.”

Like ghosts in the night, they leave the district unseen.

*

“I really did study at the Academy of Natural Philosophy,” Koller says. “I know you don’t believe me. But it’s true.” His tools mingle with Adam’s on the workbench; he reaches for a tiny set of pliers, extricating them from the mess of gears and bolts and screws. Four days in Adam’s apartment, and his presence is spreading across the space like clinging ivy. Forgotten mechanisms in every room, heavy brass tubes in corners, metal body parts behind cushions and in cupboards. He even press-gangs Adam into assisting with repair work.

It’s not as irritating as it should be. The place is already feeling more homely than it ever did.

“I know it’s true,” Adam tells him. Obedient, he shifts his grip on Koller’s arm as his hands are nudged aside by the pliers. “I looked you up, way back. Their records aren’t hard to get into.”

“That’s one of the many things I like about you, Jensen. You have a real can-do attitude.”

“I told you, you’re allowed to call me Adam.”

Koller shrugs. Again, he nudges Adam’s hands into a different position on his arm, taking a screwdriver to the delicate joint of his elbow. “Sure. So…you know what happened.”

“They expelled you. The records didn’t say why, but I can probably take a guess.” Adam’s given up on trying not to watch what’s happening. He is, he thinks, becoming immune to the instinctive nausea that used to curdle in his gut at times like these. He’s not as squeamish as he was. Now he can watch with wary curiosity as Koller opens up his own arm and tinkers with the mechanical tendons and gleaming musculature. He can hold the deadened arm upright and steady, and it only just unnerves him.

Koller calls it progress. Adam calls it several other things, but not where Koller can hear him.

“The problem with the Academy is, they are all too slow to accept positive change,” Koller says. It sounds like a lecture he’s delivered more than once. “You show them something really fucking cool, and what do they do? They freak out. They think there’s only one kind of genius you can be. And that’s just bullshit. They actually kicked out Kirin fucking Jindosh, can you believe that? He had some crazy ideas, it was awesome! Him and Piero Joplin, and then they kicked me out too. I think they just wanted an excuse. It’s not illegal to augment yourself, I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that they had problems with you shoving a giant metal plate into your skull?”

“You will never believe this,” Koller says, “But it came to me in a dream. I just…saw it. It was so clear, like someone else made the designs and then gave them to me! I had to do it. The Outsider only gives you that kind of gift once, you can’t turn it down.”

“I’m…pretty sure you can.”

Koller looks up from his work, just long enough to give Adam an uncomfortably knowing look. “You say so, but you use his gifts more often than you think. More often than you know. He watches you, Jens- _Adam_. He knows you are not like everyone else.  You don’t just sit back and let this terrible city make you into something just as terrible. You act. And the things you do, they make a difference.”

“Sounds like you know him personally,” Adam says dryly, covering the unease he feels. “Next time you’re getting drinks together in the Void, tell him I’d appreciate a little less rat plague in my life.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Koller tells him. “You’ll see. Or maybe you won’t, but he sees _you_.”

“I-”

“And I’m done here,” Koller says cheerfully, dropping his screwdriver back on the bench. His arm gives a creak, a series of clanks as the pistons wake. Whale oil shifts like sluggish marrow inside the piping that replicates and replaces his skeletal structure. Steam vents gently. He moves his fingers. “Not bad. The connections need some time to heal, but rest and Remedy will fix them, and then I’ll be as good as new. Pretty cool, right?”

He flexes his fingers, openly smug, and Adam accepts that they’ll be dropping the earlier topic. Not for good; he has questions, suspicions, and if he’s right then Koller is messing with forces far more dangerous than some Tyvian-imported gang.

 _Of course he is,_ Adam thinks wearily. _Was it ever a question_?

Still, he can’t cut the thread of affection he feels, watching Koller test the responsiveness of his new arm. Brass gleams by the light of the whale oil lamps. Pistons hiss like high tides, like secrets in shadows, like bone charms, like the drag of a corpse across cobblestones; the things that pass for normal, here in Dunwall. The things no sane man tampers with, which Koller treats like toys. Too clever by far, and some things Adam can’t protect him from.

But that won’t stop him trying.


End file.
